Anticipate distance. That's why it's etched on the barrel! Action/sports photography existed long before auto focus. And so you believe sports photogs trust their camera to get their shots for them??

And that's the excuse people give for a camera that doesn't focus squat diddly in low light. Tell me how you going to anticipate distance when you have 1,000 participants inside a gymnasium walking around in a recreation center at Rowan University.

I almost replied to this last night. Moving on a track at walking speed eh? I checked to make sure you didn't start this on April 1.

Look, I saw your port and kudos for documenting all those charity events the way you do. And I realize we come from different backgrounds.

My screen of choice was a Beattie without a split image, so while focusing, all I could see was whether it was in or it was out. I spent more than two decades shooting sports with manual focus cameras -- basketball, football and track (for some reason it always seemed like the person I needed to shoot was part of a 4x100 or 4x200 relay, both indoors and outdoors) -- so I can't comprehend the difficulty of follow focus on a slow-moving subject, moving at a fairly consistent rate. Toss in that they're repeating that same motion for several hours and our versions of reality move farther apart.

I've tried rerwriting this next portion without sounding condescending but can't. I guess the bottom line is next year at this time you'll bring your D800 (or maybe your D3s -- that would have been my choice but I also don't own a D800) to Rowan University.

Be well.

-- hide signature --

'Nice pen, bet you write good stories with it.'

A lot of people forget that a lot of professionals forsake auto focus for speed. Auto anything is inefficient, and I personally, would rather miss the shot because I miscalculated, rather than the equipment failing me.